


Like A Gift

by orphan_account



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-23
Updated: 2010-02-23
Packaged: 2017-10-07 11:58:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry just can't get enough of his Auror partner Dean Thomas, but what seems to him like a harmless obsession could put his whole future at risk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like A Gift

**Author's Note:**

> Written pre Deathly Hallows

Harry sat hunched in the corner of cell fourteen, watching Snape. If Snape was aware of Harry he gave no sign. He lay like a corpse on the narrow mattress, his eyes hidden under waxy lids. Harry stared at the harsh lines of his face, dull skin, and dirty hair for the first time in years.

Snape wore rough Muggle clothes. They diminished him. Harry could almost have thought he was someone else, no longer the suspicious teacher, just an aging man, his body pinched and thin, his long fingers rough with use.

Images he'd been trying to forget flooded his mind at the sight of Snape's fingers. He saw again the scene in the makeshift courtroom. Snape lay naked on a stone table in the centre of the room. Lamps made jagged shadows out of the Death Eaters lining the walls but cast softer light over the bruises, cuts, and bloody finger marks that covered Snape's skin. A robed Death Eater stood over him pounding into him so hard that he looked to be trying to tear him open, his fingernails digging deep into Snape's flesh, his body jerking above his thin chest. The mocking grin of the mask flashed in the light and Snape's white cock lay quiescent, bloodless, smeared with some dark substance. His fingers had clamped to the sides of the table, clutching so hard against each spasm that Harry could see blood on the stone.

Harry flinched, trying to tear his mind away from the scene, trying to drown the brutal images in innocent thoughts of school, or training, or Christmas at the Burrow—but they kept coming back—and he kept seeing Snape's eyes turned inward and dead looking, and his slack mouth greasy with spunk and spit.

~

They lay on the ground under the trees, waiting. The hot sun beat down, but they lay in the shade. There was a breeze, but so faint it barely stirred the hair on their arms. The only sounds were the monotonous ripple of water in a stream somewhere behind them, and over that, their own breathing—their own hearts beating against the ground.

It had been six hours and counting; hour after hour of being eaten alive by boredom and tension and insects. Worse, there would come a moment when both Harry and Dean would know without a doubt that their mission was a failure. When they'd have to face the fact that the intelligence must have been old, or false, and there would be no Death Eaters, no secret meeting, no captures. Dean would look at Harry out of the corner of his eye, and they would both just know.

Days like this, Dean stretching surreptitiously against the ground was an event. Days like this, Harry watched Dean.

Harry became aware of Dean so slowly that he didn't know for sure when it began. One day he looked at the thin T-shirt stretching over Dean's back, and his face grew hot and his breathing shallow. Another day he looked over at Dean and saw scratches on his arms where he'd been fidgeting against the ground, and his groin got so tight he'd had to angle his hips to give it some room. He knew it was real when the sight of the tiny, sweaty hairs in the nape of Dean's neck made him itch to bury his fingers there, and roughly pull Dean's mouth to his.

After that Harry got bolder. He started hanging back to follow Dean through doors and up stairs, just so he could look at his sleek arse and his long legs. He filed these pictures away and remembered them at night, jerking himself off silently in bed, or alone in the showers, one arm braced on the wall and an eye cocked to the door.

The problem was it felt like a betrayal of friendship. Guys weren't supposed look at each other this way unless they were gay, although—yeah—that was looking pretty likely in Harry's case.

Once during an interminable briefing session on the war—Kingsley standing by a map of Europe explaining just how fucked things actually were—Harry came to himself with a jolt to find he'd been staring hazily at Dean, half asleep, for God knows how long, with the beginnings of a hard-on in his pants. He crossed his legs to hide it and yanked his eyes up to the clock on the wall, his heart beating just a little faster than usual, and his mind still full of the sight of Dean's jeans stretched tightly over his crotch. Okay, clock, clock, I'm looking at the clock, he chanted silently. Cock, cock, I'm looking at the … _fuck._

He made himself focus on the clock, its jaunty little hands informing him that every single division of the army was facing Mortal Peril. Tell me something I don't know, he thought. There were two exceptions; the mediwizards, who were Fighting A Losing Battle, and The Mother's Magical Ammunition League, who after five minutes moved from Fed Up To Our Back Teeth to Drowning Our Sorrows. Harry didn't blame them.

His eyes wandered to Tonks where she sat across the room, looking like she was hanging on Kingsley's every word. He hadn't seen her for a few months; she was working as a courier in Berlin and had come in with the latest intelligence. Kind of a joke, really; European intell was infiltrated by Death Eaters in such deep cover that they rendered nearly everything useless. Harry thought she looked really good; her hair was bright red and she had her legs crossed and those sexy boots on. He felt his throat tighten just looking at her, and his eyes flicked uncontrollably back to Dean.

He was eyeing the hard line of Dean's jaw and thinking about how his mouth might feel wrapped around his cock when Dean turned his head and met Harry's eyes. Harry felt the blood rise on his face and hoped it didn't show. But Dean just cocked his head towards a young witch sitting in the corner, and winked. Harry glanced at her, and saw with a jolt that she was gorgeous. Dean waited till he had Harry's eyes again, and then slowly licked his lips. Sweat broke out on Harry's brow and he jerked away, straight into the barrel of Tonks's gaze. Fuck— had she seen him staring at Dean like a bloody girl? Colour flooded his face, and he turned back to Kingsley at the front.

Harry really tried to concentrate on the war for the rest of the meeting, but he could feel Tonks's eyes hard on him, and when it was over she zeroed in before he could escape.

"Wotcher, Harry!"

"Hi, Tonks." He tried and failed to make his voice unfriendly.

"Everything all right?"

"Fine thanks, Tonks."

She looked at him like she was trying to figure something out.

"Harry?"

"Yeah?"

She hesitated, and for a moment her eyes searched the room like the words she needed might be written on the walls.

"Bloody hell, Harry," she said. She put one hand on his arm, bright pink nails glistening, and grabbed his jaw with her other, forcing him to meet her eyes. Up close, she looked strained and unhappy.

"Be careful. Just— be careful," she said.

"Yeah, course, Tonks, always am." He tried to squirm away. "I've gotta go finish a report." He pulled out of her clutches, wondering what the hell she was on about, and left.

God, so what if she'd seen him watching Dean? According to what he remembered from Uncle Vernon's small-minded newspapers, half the population were poofters anyway, so what was it to anyone if Harry-savior-of-the-bloody-wizarding-world-Potter was too? Fuck them all if they didn't like it.

~

Seven hours and counting, but that day the moment of knowing it was all a waste didn't actually come. The Death Eaters came instead.

Harry saw them first, flashes of black through the trees in the distance, and the faint popping sounds of Apparition. Dean tripped the magical alarm and together they crept closer to where the Death Eaters were grouping. Behind him Harry sensed the other teams arriving and spreading out.

They sprang their trap. In the first wave of offensive spells more than half the Death Eaters went down, and those that were left were panicking and struggling to work out where the attacks were coming from. Spells fired haphazardly through the hot air as Harry crept forward into the clearing. Shielding himself behind the stunned bulk of a Death Eater, he took out two more, freezing them both and catching their wands.

A few Death Eaters were still on their feet, successfully dodging hexes, and the fight was getting dirtier. Harry saw Dean lurch out of the path of a vicious Crucio and aim a stinging hex at a large Death Eater in return. The man went down screaming, and Dean cut the hex, froze him and took his wand. Harry heard another terrible scream from the trees behind him; a burst of green and it was cut off. He launched himself towards the sound, throwing up protection spells around him as he ran, and found an Auror lying on the ground, shock in his dead eyes. Harry's vision bled rage and he spun to find the attacker. He saw a swirling flash of black in the split second before Apparition and wildly aimed a curse.

"Sectumsempra!"

The man crashed into the ground, splinched, with deep slices across his face and chest. His severed foot rolled away. There was a moment of shocked silence, and then blood welled in his wounds and his screaming fractured the air. Like a robot, Harry hit him with pain dulling and blood-clotting spells, froze him, cutting off the scream, and took his wand. Forcing down the bile in his throat, he crept away. He saw another Auror, face down in a patch of weeds, smoke rising from pale robes—_oh fuck oh Christ_—and took the wand from her dead grasp in his sweating, shaking hand. Then he stumbled into the clearing, and saw the fight was over.

Six Aurors stood in a tight group; Dean trying to contain a couple of nasty curses; but they were mostly intact. Still shaking, Harry swept his eyes over the frozen Death Eaters. There was a man on the ground, his eyes open, whose gaze locked on Harry as he walked past. His face was greasy and warped, like two faces blurring into one, and his eyes so black they seemed to repel the light. The remains of his rage gripped Harry and he wanted to kill him, to crush his ugly life away. He viciously kicked the man's ribcage, forcing his eyes to close in pain. Heart pounding, he stood watching the deformed face twitch and jerk until it was still. When he could breathe again, he walked away.

Dean looked up from the Auror he was helping and saw Harry. His eyes warmed with relief.

"Jones," he said quietly when Harry was close.

"And Talbot," replied Harry. There was nothing much else to say.

When they'd placed protection spells over the clearing, and patched everyone up, Dean Apparated out to get a portkey for the prisoners. The others busied themselves checking the Death Eaters over, looking for precious information, clues, anything really, but Harry carried the Aurors' bodies to the edge of the clearing, and laid them gently down in the shade. When he had finished he lay down himself on a clear patch of ground and closed his eyes.

Two Aurors had died that day, a high price to pay for some random captures.

He didn't know it yet, but they'd got Snape.

~

When Dean and Harry brought Snape in he was still unrecognisable. Talbot's Finite Incantatem aimed at his body had been cut off by her death, leaving Snape a grotesque mix of a burly, fat, old man, and his lean bone-featured self. Curse injuries ravaged his skin; he was bleeding and bruised and grey pustules covered his face.

He was unceremoniously dumped with the other prisoners into a holding cell to await clean-up by the mediwizards before questioning.

Harry and Dean went straight to the headquarters bar, The Wailing Witch, and began drinking. They'd been there for hours, slowly joined by the rest of the teams as they drifted in from the field. None of them had known the dead Aurors that well. The make-up of teams got shuffled a lot, maybe to try and prevent them caring too much, or maybe to hide the terrible toll of the war.

When the news came that they'd got Snape, brought by an excited young Auror running red-faced and puffing into the bar, a huge cheer went up. Harry's heart filled with triumph, and he looked at Dean.

"Fucking hell, mate!" Dean shouted over the cheering, his face tinged red and his eyes glowing. They were both swept drunkenly onto shoulders and carried around the bar. "We did it!"

~

A huge Auror marched Snape roughly into the interrogation room. He threw him at the chair and Snape collapsed into it, hitting his head sharply. Every muscle and tendon in Snape's body was strained, but the magical restraints held. His eyes glittered with rage but his head hung at a strange angle like a doll's.

As the Auror turned away to his post guarding the door, Snape spat at his feet and missed. Harry barely heard the ugly sound of the Auror's laugh. He stared at the globule of spit on the dirt floor—it was pink with blood.

They questioned him under Veritaserum. Three little drops and Snape tried to answer all the questions in the world; questions they hadn't asked, questions they didn't want answers for.

Kingsley led the interrogation but could barely control Snape's barrage of words. His skin covered in an unhealthy sheen of sweat, his eyes rolling in their sockets, Snape confessed over and over to being Dumbledore's killer, to being Voldemort's servant. He talked in confused snatches about his past— his father attacking him with a horse whip, worshipping Lucius at school, hearing the prophecy, soaking in the dark arts, dying for three minutes and twelve seconds at his initiation, hiding, running, trying to protect Draco, trying to protect himself. Snape's hands began clutching spasmodically at the arms of his chair and he confessed that he he'd loved Dumbledore more than anyone, more than anything. The Auror laughed derisively at this and Kingsley silenced him with a glare, but it made no difference. Every direct question Kingsley asked disappeared under the avalanche of information.

Over Snape's endless words Kingsley motioned to Harry that he should step outside. In the dark corridor he explained that the Veritaserum was working against them, rendering Snape unable to do anything but pour out the story of his life in one incoherent flood.

"But he confessed," said Harry, his fists clenching. "The bastard confessed!"

"He hasn't told us anything we didn't already know," said Kingsley. "He's too mindless, out of control. He's told us nothing of Voldemort, nothing of any plans, nothing than can help us."

"So he is in control!" shouted Harry. "He's doing it deliberately!"

"Potter!" said Kingsley. "Pull yourself into line!"

"Sorry," said Harry. "Fuck."

Kingsley thought for a minute. "The Snape I know would not be reduced to an imbecile by a few drops of Veritaserum. He's already been broken, and not by us."

"Who then?" said Harry.

"Use Legilimens," said Kingsley, rubbing his hand over his eyes. "I'll let him keep talking, you force your way in. Don't give him any warning. It's our best hope tonight of getting something to make a difference in this bloody war." Harry could see the strain and tiredness on Kingsley's face. He nodded, and they went back in.

Snape lolled in his chair, his chin wet with drool, useless words still pouring from his mouth. Rage filled Harry's body at the sight of him and he used it to focus his will and force himself into Snape's mind. Snape should be proud, he thought fleetingly, as sickening images began rushing past him, scene after scene of pain, humiliation, torture and finally rape.

Harry gasped and sank to his knees as darkness and pain overwhelmed his mind, barely able to comprehend what he was seeing—that Snape was most often the victim of the savagery, and never, never even once, the one in control. Hovering in the darkness above Snape's broken body, Harry watched the rape unfold. Horrified, he tried to jump through the memory like frame after frame of an old film reel, until somehow Snape burnt it up in his mind. He found himself on the floor, red and gasping and staring wildly into Snape's eyes.

"Happy now, Potter?" Snape shouted, his face distorted and vicious. "Is that what you wanted to see? Your enemy brought low and—" he stopped.

Harry stared at him, waiting. But Snape's eyes were dull again and the words started rolling out of his mouth. Kingsley ordered to him stop. But Snape could not stop, would not stop, and on and on he droned ... Narcissa ... Bellatrix ... Regulus ... Tom ... Albus ... Lucius ... and then in one spiraling string of words he confessed to having been Lucius Malfoy's lover.

Kingsley slapped him hard, stopping the words cold.

The Auror guarding the door chuckled. "Well, that's one thing you can off the bastard for at least."

Harry turned to the Auror, surprised, and then to Kingsley, who was staring at Snape, horror in his eyes.

"Strike that last from the record," Kingsley said. The quill that had been writing busily shuddered, and several lines erased themselves.

Kingsley turned to the Auror, who was still grinning. "This goes no further than this room," he said. "Snape's trial will focus on the murder of Dumbledore. It will not become a circus." He gave the man a cold look. "Understood?"

"Understood," said the man, his coarse grin fading.

"That goes for you too, Harry," Kingsley said. "He's committed many crimes, but he must be punished for Albus's death." He paused. "Did you get anything?" he asked, strain in his voice, "anything we can use?"

"No," said Harry. "I—" but Kingsley held up his hand.

"If it's no good to us tonight just submit a report. I've got work to do." Kingsley looked at the Auror. "Take him down to the cells, and gently. He'll be questioned again."

Harry watched Kingsley's strong back stoop as he walked out the door, then he turned back to Snape. A red mark had appeared on Snape's cheek, and though his eyes looked vacant, he was thankfully silent. Harry saw a shiny track of saliva sliding down his chin and shuddered with disgust.

But as he looked at Snape, at this man he hated so much, Harry's brain was screaming something inside his head. He could hardly think; it was white noise, deafening, incomprehensible, but he knew it was something terribly important, something important to him, some connection between what Snape had said, and what Kingsley had said, and what Harry was.

Then the blood froze in his veins, everything he knew turned to ice, and he understood. He turned and ran from the room, the rough laughter of the Auror following him into the darkness.

~

An hour later Harry was sitting hunched in the dark at the end of one of the old tunnels that backed onto to the field headquarters. He heard soft footfalls coming his way, the scattershot echoes of stones being kicked along the walls, and the tuneless whistle that occasionally drove him mad on assignments.

"Lumos."

Harry looked up, blinking into the light.

"Whaddya doing here?" said Dean as he slid down onto his haunches beside Harry.

Harry shrugged.

"What is it? Talbot and Jones? Snape?"

He shrugged again.

"Don't let it get to you, man. I mean—we got him. You and me—we brought in Dumbledore's killer. We're heroes."

Harry laughed and choked a bit. Dean thumped him on the back.

"Yeah, heroes," said Harry, without much force.

"Say it again! Heroes!"

"Heroes."

"And again!"

"Heroes! You maniac." Harry grinned. "You been listening to that motivational witch again?"

"Maybe listening, maybe just looking—if you know what I mean. Now let's get out of here. We're gonna miss dinner, and it's Yorkshire pud, they must have raided some mill or something."

Harry didn't move.

Dean tugged at his shoulder. "C'mon Harry! This has happened to us before and it'll happen to us again. We did everything right, we couldn't have stopped them dying. It's just war. It's the way it is. Just—" he tugged at him again. "We've still got to eat. Don't think about it, okay?"

Dean stood up and tried pulling on Harry's hand. "C'mon man! Yorkshire pudding is happening right now! Eggs! And flour! And crap! Get up, for fuck's sake!"

Harry laughed, and Dean yanked on his hand and pulled him up, and suddenly they were standing inches apart. Harry found himself looking up at Dean, close enough to touch, his senses spinning so near to his warm skin and friendly brown eyes. The smell of Dean's sweat tugged at him, and he thought about tugging on his cock at night and touching himself pretending it was Dean's skin he touched, and Dean's cock he held, and coming so hard he thought he could hit the ceiling. And in one awkward movement he leaned in and trapped Dean against the wall, spread his hands on Dean's chest to hold him still, and pressed his cracked lips onto Dean's mouth.

Harry felt Dean's heart pump wildly against his hands, and his lips twist like a kiss, and then he was pushed away, pushed roughly into the opposite wall. He slid down the wall into a pool of water, and all he could hear over the roaring in his ears was the sound of Dean's trainers thudding away down the tunnel. He crouched on the ground in the dark until the sound had faded, and he didn't know if he was shaking with fear, or cold, or both.

~

He avoided the mess hall entirely, and returned to his bunk. He wrote his report with a shaking hand and then lay in the darkness pretending to be asleep until the others came in. When he finally fell asleep he dreamed sickening dreams in which brutal rapes and tortures played over and over, first with Snape's face on the helpless bodies, then Dean's, and finally his own.

He woke in the dark filled with fear, and stumbled to Dean's bunk at the other end of the dorm.

"Keep it down," a voice groaned. Harry ignored it and shook Dean awake.

"Wha—?" Dean jerked upright, already reaching for his wand.

"It's alright," Harry whispered. "It's just me."

"What do you want?" Dean leaned away from him. His voice was cold and hard.

"Shut up!" groaned the voice again.

"Dean, I got drunk," Harry whispered. "After I helped Kingsley interrogate Snape, I got drunk. When you found me I wasn't thinking right, I was out of it. For a minute I thought you were a girl. I had my beer goggles on." Harry forced himself to keep his tone light and friendly.

Dean was quiet for a moment, then huffed out a breath. "Fuck that's a relief. For a horrible moment there I thought you fancied me mate," he whispered. "You really had me going."

Harry's body flooded with relief. "Just don't tell anyone, okay? I don't want to it kill my reputation."

"No problem, Harry." The warmth was back in Dean's voice. "Shit. You really had me worried."

"Are we okay?" Harry whispered.

"Cool," whispered Dean. "Get some sleep, we're out again in the morning."

"Will you shut the fuck up! Please!" said the voice.

"Shut up yourself," said another voice. "We're all trying to sleep here."

Harry and Dean grinned at each other, and Harry crept back to his own bed, his heart still pounding against his ribs but feeling a hundred times better. Fuck, that had been close. Dean really was a great guy.

~

A week later they dragged themselves back to headquarters after another unsuccessful mission, the only bright spots a zero body count and the luxury of a scheduled day off. At nightfall Harry left Dean overtly chatting up a sexy young Auror in The Wailing Witch—giving him an exaggerated wink and a thumbs up from the door, and returned to his bunk. He took his invisibility cloak and Apparated to the gates of Hogwarts.

He walked silently through the shadowy halls and corridors, as familiar to him as the lines on his own palm, until he came to the library. Hours later, after searching through enormous tomes of mostly outdated wizarding law, written in incomprehensible ministry jargon, or spidery medieval English—feeling more and more relieved as nothing turned up, thinking maybe he'd just misunderstood the whole scene with Kingsley and Snape and the Auror—he came across a list of capital crimes dating back 1500 years but printed, he checked, within the last ten.

Each crime had a list of names and execution dates following it. Harry counted 49 names in his list, stretching back centuries into the past but coming as close to the present as 1987.

He sat there for a long time, staring at the page, until pale light bled through the uneven glass in the window behind him, fading the yellow lamplight to nothing, and turning the skin on his hands a lifeless grey.

~

Their next mission was the most simultaneously tense and uneventful Harry had ever experienced. Absolutely nothing happened; they waited pointlessly with a group of increasingly jumpy trainee Aurors for days in the heat. It was unbearable. Harry was desperate for the weather to break, desperate for rain, but the sun beat down with no respite. The Death Eater group they'd been sent to track were either warned, and had changed their location, or didn't exist at all—just another example of crappy intelligence wasting everyone's time.

Harry couldn't relax; the relentless heat was driving his mood towards paranoia. He was so terrified of being caught watching Dean he could hardly look at him at all. He was so frightened of being found out that he sometimes ignored Dean's direct questions, pretending not to hear his voice.

He was so tense, and doing such a crappy job, and it was so obvious, that by the last day Dean's attention was permanently fixed on him, which only made it worse. Finally, Dean pulled him aside.

"Harry, what's wrong, mate? You're scaring the newbies."

Dean was leaning against a tree, a long way out of earshot of their camp. He absently rubbed the back of his neck and Harry tried not to see the muscles flexing in the soft skin under his arm, or the patch of bright sun that lit up his chest. _Fuck._

"It's nothing," said Harry, forcing himself to meet Dean's eyes. "I'm just jumpy, I guess, don't wanna lose anyone else."

"You sure?" asked Dean. "It's not your scar playing up again, or some weird shit like that?"

"Yeah," said Harry. "No, it's fine."

"Okay. But, well, try and keep it together mate. You're scaring me too."

"Yeah, I will," said Harry.

Dean grinned at him, the shit-eating grin he always used when they'd escaped some trap together, or pulled some successful caper off, and Harry actually felt better. They walked back to the camp, and Harry walked in front of Dean and kept his eyes firmly on the ground.

He woke sweating in the pale light of dawn with his sleeping bag trapping his legs. The thick summer air felt close around him, and his cock, hard as iron, was pushing against his open hand. He glanced to the side in a panic, but his tent mate Mark was fast asleep, rolled into a ball of oblivion a safe distance away.

Harry's breath came fast, and his head was full of his dream. Dean spread out, naked, his skin like dark honey, all shifting muscles and smiling eyes and glinting teeth. There for Harry's shaking hands and mouth and _oh fuck_… His hand sped on his rigid cock, his eyes closed tightly, one fist shoved into his mouth to stop himself crying out. _Oh god_ … He came, spilling frantically over his own hand, his body flooding with relief, and he curled up, knees shaking against his chest, and he pushed his fists into his eyes to stop the tears that came out of nowhere, out of absolutely fucking nowhere.

Afterwards, as the insidious morning sun spiked through the trees onto the tent, Harry watched Mark toss and turn in the rising heat. He thought about Snape for the first time since he had run away, leaving him broken and drooling in the interrogation chair.

~

"He's told us nothing, Harry," said Kingsley as he strode down the corridor towards his office. Harry had to half run to keep up. "Nothing at all. He still doesn't respond properly to Veritaserum, and he's totally silent when he's not drugged." Kingsley stopped outside the door to his office.

"He's scheduled to be transferred to the ministry cells in a week. I can't believe it, our best capture yet, and nothing."

"So, can I?" said Harry.

"He's all yours. Just make sure you follow proper procedure." Kingsley gave him a wry smile. "If you get anything out of him you can have a promotion."

Harry grinned and turned back up the way they'd come.

"Harry!" He turned his head. Kingsley had paused halfway into his office.

"Yeah?"

"If you can get to the bottom of what you saw in his mind I'd be, well, surprised, but grateful. We've had a psyche wizard on him and the whole routine but we still don't know if he planted those images or if those things really happened."

"Okay," said Harry.

"Harry, be careful. He's not trustworthy, even if he did get the rough end of things in the other camp. He's clever."

"Okay."

Kingsley looked at him for a moment, a considering light in his eyes.

"Go now before I change my mind."

"Thanks!" Harry yelled as he raced up the corridor, Kingsley's laugh following him until it was cut off by the slam of his office door.

~

So Harry sat in Snape's plain cell on a hard chair, uninvited and unacknowledged.

He looked at Dumbledore's killer, and breathed carefully, and rage flowed into his chest like air. Snape was helpless, his body wasted, wandless, and defenceless. Harry had all the power, all the right, and all the desire to deal out justice himself, and he wanted to, _oh_, he wanted to so badly. To pick Snape's pathetic body up and smash it into the wall, to kick him and punch him and snap his scrawny neck, to bloody his face and drive his knees into his stomach and _hurt_ him until his life bled out onto the stone floor.

But he imagined Dumbledore watching him, and he could sense Dumbledore's disappointment at Harry's anger, and he could sense his sadness that Harry needed so much violence.

So he forced himself to calm down, to ride out his anger until it dissipated, and to wait until he could look at Snape's face without needing to break it.

Hours ticked by, and Harry had to hold himself together against the force of what he'd seen in Snape's mind, and for that he needed a different kind of control—because he wouldn't wish that on anyone, not on anyone at all. He knew instinctively, the knowledge deep in his bones, that Snape hadn't planted anything in his mind, that Snape had actually lived through those ghastly scenes, endured those terrible punishments. Harry had to fight not to feel pity and horror, not to forget that this man had killed Dumbledore in cold blood.

But eventually he became aware that his arse ached from sitting so long and he got up and leaned against the wall. He stared down at Snape's face and tried to form his real question, tried to think of a way to ask him about Malfoy.

The questions burned in his mind but stuck in his throat. Over Snape's wretched frame he saw the flicker of him naked and bathed in yellow light, light that mocked his ravaged skin with softness, and laid over that was a shadow of the teacher too, cruel and unbending, and so very intimidating.

Into the long silence came only the quiet echo of water dripping down a wall, and sleep-heavy breathing from the other cells.

Snape opened his eyes. He looked at the stained ceiling.

"Come to gloat, Potter?" he said, his voice cold.

Harry still couldn't speak.

"You've been here long enough to get through whatever pathetic little passion play you've been staging in your limited brain. Now get out." His voice gained strength as he spoke, and his eyes glowed with spite.

"I—"

"In words a simpleton could understand—" Snape's face twisted in anger, "Fuck! Off! Potter!"

Snape's will pressed at him, compelling him to leave. But Harry pressed his back to the wall and stood his ground. This was a Snape he could deal with. There was no goddamned way he was leaving now.

Still refusing to look at him, Snape rolled and faced the filthy wall, as though by doing that he could erase Harry from the room. This little sign of weakness filled Harry with determination. No one would ever know. He could force Snape to tell him the truth, and no one would ever know. He was a dead man anyway.

He gritted his teeth, his eyes on Snape's thin back. "Tell me about Malfoy."

He saw Snape's body tense with shock and pressed his advantage.

"Tell me, you bastard!"

Snape rolled slowly onto his back and this time he did look at Harry, his eyes glinting like knives.

"No."

"I want to know. It can't make any difference to you."

In the space of a moment Harry found himself thrown against the bars, fighting for breath, one of Snape's hands wrapped around his throat and the other forcing his arm up above his head. He struggled, gasping for breath against the choking hand.

"That is where you are utterly wrong," Snape breathed into his ear, his voice filled with hatred.

Harry's vision swam as Snape increased the pressure on his neck and bent his arm painfully backwards through the bars. He tried to struggle but Snape crushed him into the bars and held him still. His wand jutted uselessly into his thigh and he finally understood how much danger he was in.

"That is the last time you invade my privacy, Potter." Snape jerked Harry's neck, smashing his head into the bars.

As pain knifed through his skull Harry saw the fury in Snape's face fade to disgust. He loosened the hold on his neck, and Harry hauled in a deep breath; breathed in Snape's stale breath, and desperate, relieved, breathed it in again.

Snape dropped his arm, and Harry sagged helplessly as the pain was replaced by a rush of warmth. Over the pounding in his head he heard Snape's sinuous voice close to his ear.

"Get out."

He fumbled for his wand to open the door, stumbled through it, locked it again with shaking fingers, and ran.

~

Snape remained silent and still beside the bars. In the hollow of his cheek a muscle twitched, and if he thought of Lucius then—or if Lucius was simply embedded so deeply in the rhythm of his thoughts that it made no difference, as Potter had said—he showed no other sign of distress.

His hair hung over his face, his clothes hung off his hunched shoulders like the ragged wings of a dead bird, and his deep shadow poured endlessly onto the dusty floor in the relentless light of the cell.

~

Harry ran until he reached the darkest place in the tunnels, and collapsed onto the damp stone floor. His head ached. He could feel bruised imprints where Snape's ribs had ground into his, where his thigh had forced Harry's open against the bars, where Snape's fingers had squeezed his neck. He shuddered and vomited, coughing and retching the contents of his stomach onto the ground, and crawled away to lean against the curving wall.

Snape's rank breath and the musty smell of his clothes filled his senses, and even after he pulled himself together—showering, having a drink in the bar, crashing on his bunk—he could still taste him on his breath.

~

He slept badly that night, and maybe that was why.

Dean called for Harry, and he tried to respond but his reflexes were strangely slow.

He moved towards Dean through the thick hot air like it was water. His ears were filled with the grind of bodies crashing against each other, or against the hard ground. He could smell the smoke-tang of spells all around him, and he tried to hurry, but his body weighed him down like lead. He kept moving towards Dean and it felt like a year passed, watching him fall, watching gravity pull him down.

Another year and he reached him, another to pull Dean's limp body into his arms, another to drag him off the field. Then another year, and another, and all he could do was crouch over him stupidly, vaguely, uselessly.

Dean lay on the ground like a dream gone wrong, only the blood sliding down his arms, down his neck, and down his cheeks out of place. Harry crouched over his body and tried to protect it from harm.

After a while, everything faded.

~

There was a large water stain on the ceiling, spreading over the cracked tiles. It looked a little like a person playing Frisbee, Harry thought, or chasing a UFO, with a blurry disk shape above the reaching arms.

Kingsley's face hovered into view below the ceiling, and Harry tilted his head to see him clearly, framed by blue hospital walls and the bright rectangle of a window.

His skin looked gray and tired. There were deep lines on his forehead Harry had never really noticed before.

"Glad to have you with us, Harry," he said.

Harry searched his face. Kingsley looked back, but then he cut his eyes away, shaking his head—no survivors.

Not only Dean then, but all of them. Harry looked back at the ceiling.

"You're to be discharged today," said Kingsley. "I need you back in the field tomorrow morning, we're at a terrible disadvantage." Harry saw the sunlight glinting on Kingsley's tiny gold earring out of the corner of his eye. "I'm sorry about your crew, and I'm sorry about Thomas. It was a plant; false intell, the usual."

He looked down at Harry from his great height. "Your new partner's coming by to see you today, you'll need to run through procedure, you know the drill." He turned to leave.

"Kingsley."

"Yeah?"

"Has Snape been transferred to the ministry yet?" Harry tried to keep control of his voice.

"Tomorrow. What, you think you can get something?" Kingsley said, with the ghost of a smile.

"I just need to talk to him." That got him a raised eyebrow. "About Dumbledore, I want to try and understand."

"Well if he spills at all you know what to do."

"Yeah," said Harry.

Kingsley reached down and squeezed his shoulder before walking out. Harry waited till he was gone before curling up in the stiff sheets and covering his face with his hands. His throat hurt and his chest ached and he could hardly breathe, but he waited and waited, and after a long time passed, he felt numb.

He made himself get up. He picked up his kit from beside the bed. Without asking to be discharged, he walked out. In his dorm he grabbed a towel, tried not to see that Dean's bunk had a new occupant, a woman's dressing gown folded neatly over the end, and headed to the showers.

That day, routine kept him sane. His new partner was nice, as experienced as Dean, and intelligent enough not to mention the circumstances. For all Harry knew she was in the same boat. They would be able to work together.

And in the back of the mind was a tiny hope, that somehow, sometime during his wretched life, Snape had had a lover. He had not been completely alone. There might be a way around the law, or a way through.

~

Harry arrived at Snape's cell that night after the guard had gone off duty. He was calm, unemotional, and prepared to do whatever he had to do get the truth.

He stood looking through the bars for a moment. Snape sat on the bed, staring at the opposite wall, weariness in every harsh line of his body. Harry let himself in, locked the cell, and positioned himself opposite Snape, sliding down and leaning his back against the wall.

He felt steady this time. There was no rise of emotions he couldn't control. He opened his mouth to speak.

"Potter," said Snape.

Harry looked up straight into the hard line of his gaze.

"Cast a silencing spell."

"Why?" demanded Harry.

"Because what you want to talk about requires absolute privacy," replied Snape, and Harry had to strain to hear his voice.

"I can Obliviate you," said Harry, getting to his feet again, filled with fear. "You don't know anything."

"Oh, but I do," Snape said, and his voice, though quiet, was filled with menace.

They looked at each other across the empty space of the cell. Snape's face gave nothing away. Harry considered. If Snape wanted to cut to the chase that suited him just fine. And he could Obliviate him. He would, if he had to.

He cast the strongest silencing spell he knew.

Snape watched him closely. His body looked drained, defeated, old before its time. His hair held strands of grey, his mouth was hard, and his eyes sunken, the skin under them bruised. It seemed impossible to Harry that Snape had known love of any kind.

"Tell me about Malfoy," Harry blurted out, flinching as the words left his mouth, half expecting another attack. Snape did not move, though his eyes reflexively closed at the mention of the name.

His voice was like steel when he finally replied. "I will not discuss that subject with you. I will not give you private information. Stupid boy."

"Then what the hell will—" started Harry. Snape cut him off.

"I am prepared to tell you anything else you need to know."

Harry stared at him, surprised.

"There is a condition," Snape said. Some emotion was twisting his face, and the look in his eyes reminded Harry of what he'd seen on the tower. He shivered, but nodded.

"I will not tell you what it is. Either agree to abide by my terms, or stop wasting my time."

Harry felt a surge of anger. Gripping his wand he lurched towards Snape, but caught himself. There was no one else he could safely talk to. And there was nothing—nothing he could inflict on Snape to force him to talk that would even come close to what he'd already suffered. He slid down the wall and sat on the floor again, his head down.

"Well, Potter?" Snape sounded amused.

Harry fingered his wand, twisting it in his hand, thinking. He raised it.

"Legilimens," he said quietly.

Below him a blonde man writhed, hair across his face, sweat on his reddened skin. His eyes were closed and his neck exposed, straining upwards. "Ahh—" the man gasped, moving, sucking in a breath. "Ahh—" he thrashed his head and gritted his teeth. Harry felt a rush of pressure in his cock. Friction, and heat, and— "Oh" said the man, "oh, fuck—" Blood pounded in Harry's brain and he ground his cock into him, unable to think, unable to stop— "Don't stop, don't—" said the man, thrashing his head and shaking the hair out of his face. Harry barely registered that it was Lucius before a new wave of lust overtook him. His body flooded with heat and he bent down and bit into the tendons in his neck, tasting sweat and salt, the pressure in his cock unbearable— he was— he was going to—

He was flat on his back. Snape crouched over him, hands on either side of Harry's chest, eyes bright with malice. Harry lay under him gasping. To his horror he realized the amazing pressure on his cock was the heel of his own hand, still pushing frantically into his groin.

Overcome with shame and disgust he roughly pushed Snape off and rolled to his feet. He backed into the wall, only belatedly noticing that Snape, still crouched on the floor, held his wand.

Harry froze.

Snape slowly rose to his feet, bringing Harry's wand up to aim at his chest. Harry wanted to scream, but the sound locked in his throat.

Snape was silent as he stared down the shaft of Harry's wand. Harry saw calculation under the fury and hatred in his eyes.

"Suffice to say you won't learn anything you want to know that way, Potter," said Snape, his voice tight with restraint.

Harry was still reeling from the intensity of the Legilimency. He'd never heard of a Legilimens re-living a memory inside another person's body before. But that was definitely what had just happened.

"You can be utterly certain," continued Snape, "that if you do that again I will kill you."

Adrenaline coursed through Harry's body and he rushed at Snape, trying to rip the wand out of his grasp. A repelling hex picked him up and slammed him against the wall.

"Try anything else and you'll be dead before you hit the ground." Snape's voice almost curled around the words.

Shaking, Harry pressed his back against the rough stone wall and nodded at Snape, uncomfortably aware that his cock was still half hard. Snape's eyes flicked down to his crotch, then back up.

"Do we have an agreement?"

"You mean, like before?" Harry asked, surprised.

"Like before," repeated Snape, his voice dripping disdain. "Yes Potter. An agreement according to our discussion, prior to your clumsy attempt to _read my mind."_

Harry didn't understand what Snape wanted. Why he was still prepared to talk to him at all. Why he wasn't dead on the floor and Snape gone, Disapparated. But maybe, Harry thought, maybe if I just keep him talking long enough, I'll find the right moment to attack.

So he cleared his mind and lifted his head and let Snape look into his eyes, keeping them as wide and open as possible. Snape lowered the wand, but something glowed in his eyes. "I'm not stupid, Potter," he sneered. Harry stared back at him defiantly.

There was another long pause. The wall was cold against Harry's back, and his balls ached.

When Snape finally spoke his voice was as dark and commanding as Harry remembered. "Tell me what you already know," he said.

It took him a minute to remember why he was there. "After you said what you said, under the Veritaserum," he started, "and Kingsley— reacted the way he did, I went to Hogwarts and did some research." Snape's lip rode up at that, but Harry ignored him. "I found it on a list of wizarding crimes that are punished by death. That's all I know."

"By your eloquent 'it' you mean sodomy, I presume," said Snape.

"Yeah." Harry couldn't meet Snape's eyes any longer, and he looked away, sliding down the wall and resting his arms over his knees.

"The fact that you're neither dead, nor in jail awaiting death, leads me to think you've had the sense never to discuss this with anyone else."

"Yeah," said Harry. "I sort of told— well Dean, my Auror partner knew. But I asked him not to tell."

Snape's face hardened. "Then you must Obliviate him. You must go and do it at once. In his sleep if you can."

A wave of loss swept through Harry's body, so bad he could hardly breath. "He's dead," he whispered. Snape looked at him. "He's dead, you bastard! He's dead." He hid his face in his hands, dragging air harshly into his lungs until the pain in his chest eased.

"Is this by any chance the Thomas boy from your year?" asked Snape as though they were simply having a conversation.

"Yes."

"Then you are alive because he didn't know either. His parents were Muggles too."

"Why didn't he know?" Harry asked, suddenly caring again, trying to keep his voice calm. "Why didn't he know, and why don't I know? And why is it so bad?"

Snape sat down on his bunk, the wand held loosely in one hand. He rubbed the back of his other hand over his mouth, and something about the sight of his long fingers made Harry add quietly, "and why, if it's such a dangerous crime, did those men rape you?" He couldn't look at Snape. He waited for an explosion, but heard instead a bitter laugh. He looked up.

"Potter, despite what you saw, not only the act of sodomy, but even a preference for any form of sex that isn't strictly heterosexual, has been a capital crime for well over a thousand years. That incident you saw—" Snape's face seized with emotion. "All those incidents—were designed to punish me. They would never have been either reported or discovered. They were intended simply as unbearable insults." He paused again, lines hardening around his mouth. "Death Eaters operate so far outside the law, it's more a matter of which crime the ministry would choose to execute for, should they be caught."

Snape spoke with an ironic lift to his voice, but Harry saw his hands had clenched into fists, the knuckles a cold, bloodless white. Harry shivered, rubbing his own arms. All the heat of summer couldn't penetrate these damp windowless cells.

"Potter. This is the most important thing I will tell you. Listen carefully." Snape waited until Harry's eyes lifted to his. "You must never talk to anybody about this. You must never discuss the law or ask questions or whine that it's unfair. Never. Do you understand?"

"Yes," said Harry. "But I need to know why."

"It's very rare," said Snape. "Only one or two witches or wizards a generation. It's much less common than among Muggles." Harry opened his mouth to speak, but Snape picked the question out of his mind— "A rape is an act of violence, Potter. It requires nothing more than the desire to dominate and hurt." Harry felt sick to his stomach.

"Does that mean there's someone else?" he finally asked. "In my generation?"

"Possibly," said Snape. "But don't count on it. The chance of recognizing each other is small. Don't risk your safety. Don't hope."

"But you had—"

Snape was across the room before Harry could even move. He crouched over him, his hand painfully twisting Harry's arm, his eyes burning his skin. He was so close that Harry's own eyes closed. "Do not say that name." Snape's menacing tone raised goose flesh over Harry's skin. He leaned an inch closer, his lank hair brushing across Harry's face, over his closed eyelids. Harry could feel cool breath on his lips. He shivered. After a moment, Snape released his arm and straightened up.

"Stand up, Potter," he ordered.

Harry rose to his feet, his heart pounding. He opened his eyes. Snape was uncomfortably close, Harry's wand held firmly in one hand, waiting.

"Why is it a crime?" Harry made himself ask. "And why don't people protect each other?"

Snape crossed his arms, but did not move away. "People, as you call them so confidently, are afraid." He turned his head to the side for a moment, considering, and Harry looked up at the shadowed skin where his jaw met his neck, only to skate his eyes away when Snape turned back. "What's the worst thing that could happen to a wizard, Potter?" he asked in a low voice.

"I don't know," said Harry. "Death?"

"Think for once in your misbegotten life!" Snape's eyes raked his face, and Harry shrank into the wall.

"Being a Squib?"

"Exactly," said Snape. "It's considered a curse that if left unchecked will completely destroy the magic in entire bloodlines. That's why it's punished by death. That's why no one helps anyone, or explains anything to Muggle-borns, or talks about it at all. Fear." Snape's voice was dark and bitter. "Wizards have betrayed their own kin to keep the magic in their lines."

"But that's stupid!" shouted Harry, his fists clenching at his sides.

"Of course. I was one of the strongest wizards of my generation. And though it nauseates me to admit it," Snape's voice twisted into sarcasm, "so Potter, are you."

They looked at each other. Harry could still hear the sound of water dripping, the faint sleep-breathing from the other cells. Snape's face was shadowed by his hair, but Harry could see his black eyes glinting as he cocked his head.

"Does that conclude your questions?"

Harry's eyes caught on Snape's fingers where they rested over his thin biceps.

"Yes," he said, pressing back into the wall.

Snape stepped in, though they were barely a foot apart, and Harry's stomach turned over. Snape raised one hand, as if to touch Harry's cheek, and paused, letting his fingertips hover in the air.

"You know what I want?" he asked in a soft voice, and Harry was suddenly aware of the air between them, of Snape's breath on his face.

His heart started slamming against his chest.

"Understand this could make it stronger, make the desire for other men harder to bear," said Snape. Harry was strung so tightly he almost burst out laughing, but a second later his body registered the dark tone in Snape's voice. He huffed in a tiny breath and shivered. Snape's eyes moved slowly down his body, and he dropped his fingers, barely touching Harry's chest.

"You'll have knowledge of what could be."

And standing there, clothed and robed, Harry felt utterly exposed. Snape's voice seemed to strip off the layers of himself and leave him shuddery and raw. He could barely comprehend what Snape was telling him. The roaring in his blood he'd felt buried in Snape's memory, grinding frantically into Malfoy, was beginning again.

Snape put his hands on Harry's arms and pulled him out from the wall. He moved around behind him but did not touch. Harry felt the seconds tick by. He listened for a change in Snape's quiet breathing. His whole body grew tense, his skin hot and cold, but still nothing happened.

"I want to touch you," said Snape.

Harry closed his eyes, and after a moment he felt a shift behind him and breath on his neck.

In the darkness he felt Snape's hands begin to skim down his arms and they stilled him, centered him, stopped the rushing in his brain. He concentrated on the feeling of Snape's hands sliding back up his arms, brushing over his shoulders and down again. The strokes were gentle and light, but Harry felt them placing him inside his own body, making him aware of himself, seducing him. Snape's hands slipped low over his hips and around to the front, coming to rest on his thighs. Harry could hardly breath.

Snape took one of Harry's hands and pressed his wand into it. He leaned forward and Harry felt his face against his hair.

"Cast another silencing spell."

Shaking, Harry took his wand and whispered the spell, feeling the slight tingle of magic. Snape pressed his lips against Harry's neck and Harry dropped the wand. It clattered onto the floor.

Keeping his mouth against Harry's neck, Snape gently opened his trousers and took out his cock. Harry pushed back into Snape's strong body and there was hardness against the small of his back. His body flooded with heat and _fuck fuck fuck_ like every wet dream he'd ever had he was utterly overwhelmed but it was real.

He opened his eyes to see Snape's long thumb squeezing around the base of his cock and his rough palm rubbing his balls. His skin flushed red as blood filled his cock and Snape began stroking it, pulling away the foreskin as it hardened. Snape's other hand moved aside Harry's robes and pushed up his T-shirt, baring his nipples. He pinched and pulled at a nipple, and stroked and squeezed his cock, and he moved his lips from Harry's neck and kissed and licked at his ear: and the hot breath and the wetness and the pressure on his nipple and the fire in his cock flooded through Harry and he gasped for breath and came, shuddering, profanities spilling from his mouth, falling back into Snape's arms, tears stinging his eyes.

Snape held him and soothed his cock with gentle strokes, his face pressed into Harry's hair, waiting.

And after a while, when Harry had cooled and come back to earth, Snape spoke again. "I'm going to fuck you," he said.

Harry's heart started racing, and Snape pushed him away, just enough so he could support his own weight, and turned him around.

He tilted Harry's face up to his, and Harry saw the flush staining his pale skin and the raw need in his eyes.

So he let Snape lead him to the stained mattress and lay him down and remove his clothes and carefully open him. He let Snape teach him arcane spells and almost forgotten ways of easing passage into another's body, and he refused to think about anything except _right now._

When he passed from fear into pleading, into _begging_, Snape let himself go. He drowned himself in Harry, and he screamed his pleasure aloud, and if he thought of Lucius then, or if Lucius was simply woven into every breath, every touch, Harry never knew.

~

Deep in the night Harry whispered into Snape's neck. "You could run. You could take my wand tonight and run. Leave everything behind."

There was a long silence. "Potter," Snape said. His hand slipped over the planes of Harry's chest, fingers dipping into the hollows between his ribs. "I cannot endure any more." He slid his hand up Harry's neck to cup his cheek. "I want it to end."

Later, Harry stirred again, and mouthed words into Snape's thin chest. "Tell me you loved Dumbledore. Tell me the Death Eaters punished you because you're on our side."

This time Snape was silent for much longer. Harry let his eyes close, and after a while he thought Snape must be asleep. Then fingers tugged his chin, tilting it upwards. Firm lips closed over his and Harry's heart almost stopped beating. Snape's lips pressed into his, soft and hard at the same time, and held there. Snape's hand was shaking so Harry curled his own around it, to hold him steady, to hold them in place. After a while he felt something warm and wet on their cheeks. Then Snape pulled away and pulled Harry's head down to his chest. "I can't tell you that, Potter," he said.

~

Afterwards Harry looked at men, but learned to hide it well. He learned to pass, to appear unconcerned with everything except the war. An obsession with killing Voldemort was acceptable, and he'd free everyone else by doing so, even if he couldn't free himself.

~

Three years later the war was finally over, and amid the celebration and mourning, the trials of the war criminals began. When Snape's sentence was announced Harry obtained permission to visit him in Azkaban.

He was left alone with him in his cell for one hour, and this only because the Auror assumed Harry needed some kind of personal revenge.

Snape lay on the floor on a pile of dirty rags. He was skin and bone. There were open sores on his legs and blood smeared on his face and his hair had been hacked off close to his scalp.

Harry dropped to his knees and pulled Snape into his arms. He cradled his head and tried to warm him. There was nothing to say; there was nothing to do. He didn't understand his own heart. He didn't understand how he could hate someone so much, as deeply as he hated Snape, and yet it could hurt so unbearably to see him like this.

When the Auror returned he was shocked to see Harry sitting against the wall with Snape's body in his arms, and his lips pressed to Snape's filthy hair.

~

He didn't go to the execution. And even though he tried to close his ears to them, enough little details slipped through to twist and pull at his gut. How Snape had been too weak to stand, how he said nothing in his own defense, and how he had not raised his head, not even to look at the Aurors casting the spell. Harry overheard all this through snatches of excited talk in the streets, or in the corridors at work. He felt cut off from the world, and cut off from himself, and he finally understood what Snape had been trying to tell him. Because Snape was right, it was harder to know—it was the most painful thing in the world—to know how it felt to be touched and held and owned.

~

Snape had pulled gently out of Harry, stroked his shuddering limbs and wiped away the semen from his chest. Harry had hidden his face in Snape's chest and tried to hold on to the feelings, but they slipped away, and even after a few minutes he could barely recall being overwhelmed by heat and need and release—and even though he wanted the night to last as long as possible, in the end, he fell asleep.

Snape did not sleep. He held Potter in his arms until dawn, when he woke him, and dressed him, and sent him away.


End file.
